This is the most stunning and forceful letter I have read from the Afghanistan war. It was written in 2010 from Afghanistan by Colonel Harry Tunnell, the Brigade Commander of 5/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

After this letter, Colonel Tunnell was investigated and the normal smear campaign unfolded. Having been embedded with his Brigade in 2010, it became obvious that they were put into a no-win situation, with troops spread over several provinces in Afghanistan.

My brother-in-law did two tours. His comment was that regardless of how well we prosecuted the war (and he is not a fan of the way it has been handled) nothing, absolutely nothing is going to change on the ground. They are living in medieval times, with a medieval mindset and a pre-medieval religion and most do not want change.

4
posted on 10/10/2012 11:04:07 AM PDT
by newheart
(The greatest trick the left ever pulled was convincing the world it was not a religion.)

Colonel Tunnell is truly a courageous soldier. He placed his concerns about his troops ahead of his own career. Just wonder how many Navy commanders have the same concerns but have not written to the Secretary of the Navy. Our big blue water capital ships are in the narrow confines of the Persian Gulf and are very vulnerable to the Chinese shore to ship missiles that have been supplied to Iran. There is no strategic reason to put those big carriers in the Gulf.

The very idea that women could be integrated into Afhan forces is stupid beyond the pale. Educated fools who would propose to impose our social constructions on a relic civilization, if it can be called a civilization, is just plain stupid. Not ignorant, STUPID.

They are living in medieval times, with a medieval mindset and a pre-medieval religion and most do not want change.

Yep, in Afghanistan there is no "nationality" as we know it. Most of the stone-age people who live there know, in general terms, only the boundaries of their own villages - - their own worlds. They never heard of "Afghanistan" and really couldn't care less.

COL Tunnell’s letter seems right on the mark and is especially informative about Helmand Province, the site of most of the losses for the OK ARNG 45th IN Bde in their recent deployment. The colonel’s summary of the failings of allies, as well as the COIN strategy, blows away the BS that passes for reporting these days.

As a former Field Artillery officer, I was also gratified to see him note the performance of FA personnel when placed in jobs other than putting steel on a target to take out the enemy. This has been a significant concern of mine where people are misused and mal-assigned away from their training or expertise, FA or not.

A book from Slate.com was excerpted this summer and it had some info on COL Tunnell. The book, apparently written by an Indian (dot, not feathers), is not kind to the brigade commander on his tactics. It does make for a good read because it fills in some areas only brushed in the colonel’s PDF letter. The link to the excerpt article is below:

Actually, most of the people who live in the tribal villages are little more than observers, watching strange, well-equipped forces from distant foreign lands do battle against insurgent forces from other, nearby foreign lands. The natives do whatever they have to to stay alive. They have absolutely no allegiance to either side. Their only goal is survival, and it is all they have known since the Russians invaded in 1980.

Oh my. I read the whole letter. I can understand how the Colonel’s brutally-frank letter could be career-ending, particularly when he was politically-incorrect enough to point out the widespread homosexuality and pedophilia of the Afghan forces.

Oh yeah, I meant to highlight that, and then managed to not do it when posting. Page 5, at the bottom. I OCRed the document, it came through pretty well. From the letter:

d. Aberrant sexual behavior is acceptable. Considering the misogynistic culture that is common one should not be surprised that most men who join the security forces will have had limited interaction with women - a recruit may have never been alone with a woman who is not a relative. There is an acceptance of pedophilia that is wide spread and boys are sometimes kidnapped. Leaders have been known to sexually assault male subordinates. Even if sexual activity between males is consensual it has implications for good order and discipline which is why, in many arnies, fraternization is not allowed.

It worked fairly well for the Germans and Japanese. Of course, they had a history of civilization and learning. So I don’t think it will work in Afghanistan, just pointing out that “busting heads to persuade them to be more ‘democratic’” has worked in the past.

Democracy is a really, really bad idea - our own field manuals said so until the 1930s (Hmmm... I wonder what changed?). Even Representative Republics are hard to do - look at what is happening to ours.

Folks like Afghanis, Iraqis, Syrians, Egyptians, etc. need authoritarian governments that can, and WILL bust heads if the herd gets out of line. They also need leaders who can pull an orderly transfer of power even in the face of civil unrest. What they don’t need is “democracy.”

Actually, you need stuff their mouths full of bacon BEFORE you execute them.
IIRC, there is a fatwa saying that, upon death, a martyr is transported directly paradise and nothing done to his body after death will affect this.
So bacon first, then bullet.

Why should they change? It is all about gender apartheid. If your ‘religion’ assures you that you can marry 15 year old girls until you’re 80 and treat your wife like a servant and like property-of course you don’t want anything to change.

32
posted on 10/10/2012 12:29:50 PM PDT
by SMARTY
("The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings. "Henri Frederic Amiel)

The Army doesn’t want smart Officers, they want obedient Officers. If General Petraeus was so good, why are we still in Afghanistan? Why is Iraq falling apart again? Petraeus was real good at getting promoted and lining himself up for a good job once he got out of the Army. As the head of the CIA, shouldn’t they have heard something prior to the attack in Libya? 11 years in Afghanistan......2000 dead American Soldiers.....untold pain and misery for Soldiers, and families, as they have to keep deploying to wars that never end. Why are we paying these admirals and generals to lose? Why do we give these losers a retirement? For successfully losing? Goddamn, this fighting and killing and dieing is a hard business. Stay the fuck out of it if you can’t win in combat. I could care less about how fast you can run two miles or how great a PowerPoint presentation you can give. Can you build units that will fight, win and survive on the battlefield? That’s the only measure. The rest is bullshit. I knew we were in trouble when I saw the memorandum saying it was unfair to evaluate Officers based on their performance in combat. What the hell should their evaluations be based on? Oh, yeah, do they look fat in their photo? We have to hold these admirals and generals accountable. If we keep rewarding failure, we’re just going to get more failures. What if it was your kid dead? Do you think there’s no grief in a dead Soldier’s family? Goddamn, let’s start requiring civilians to go on casualty notifications. We’ll use the voter rolls just like jury duty with no exceptions or excuses. Then, maybe people would start to care when they see the widows and the crying kids. And yes, I swore. 2,000 dead Soldiers told me it was OK.

34
posted on 10/10/2012 12:47:45 PM PDT
by blueunicorn6
("A crack shot and a good dancer")

Thank you for posting this. It needs to be seen by all. I knew much was not kosher there or in the Army but not to this extent. Knowing some current active duty Army folks, I’ve been told some things but not to this extent. Truly shocking and eerily reminiscent of RVN in some ways.

1) Consider the source. Michael Yon has done some fine reporting in the past, there's no doubt. He had a special "in" with 5-2 due to his past relationship with CSM Prosser, our Brigade CSM. However, he's become unreliable in his information as of late. For example, he posted an article stating as fact the complete halting of all indirect fire and close air support in Afghanistan and no more patrolling aside from just outside the FOBs/COPs, when the reality was that this was a very temporary status. Temporary operational halts are common, and pretending like it was some permanent change that would cost lives was completely irresponsible. Yon should know better.

2) COL Tunnell was very nearly fired as the commander of 5-2 after the Brigade's NTC rotation just before their deployment. He was obsessed with implementing "counter-guerilla" as the Brigade's overarching strategy, focusing mostly on fire and maneuver at the expense of practically everything else. He was dismissive of COIN (counter-insurgency) as a strategy, as this letter clearly shows. While I won't go into the pros and cons of counter-guerilla and COIN, the idea that a BCT commander was going to shift all plans and operational resources of NATO in Regional Command-South (RC-S) to pursue his accepted doctrine from the 1970s was either completely idiotic or recklessly arrogant. Compound the issue with the fact that the commander of RC-S was a British one-star general who was practically a pacifist (remember the "courageous restraint" medal idea being floated around? That was his) and a tough operational environment was made even tougher due to the constant friction between Task Force Stryker and RC-S HQ.

3) Worst of all was 2-1 IN Battalion. While still in garrison, their Battalion Commander was fired essentially for driving his entire Battalion into the ground by working them relentlessly. COL Tunnell's "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" mentality was wholly embraced by that guy and he kept 2-1 training in the field constantly. With such a high deployment OPTEMPO, garrison, while important for training Soldiers, is also important for allowing some breathing room for Soldiers and their families. There was no breathing room in 2-1. They trained constantly and then they would deploy. Family time was minimal. He was the first Battalion Commander to sentence a Soldier to hard labor since Vietnam (I have to admit, I liked that one). Anyway, he was finally fired, but only after he was raising too many eyebrows from higher levels--COL Tunnell loved his aggression. Well, the aggression paid off with an aggressive unit.

However, there's a problem. From personal experience, aggression and COIN do not mix well. It's dull and frustrating. Very little actually happens when it comes to combat, especially in the Strykers since they're such a hard target. The enemy knows this and, aside from IED attacks, they tend to leave Strykers alone. This aggression and the idle hands led to rampant drug use and the formation of the infamous "Kill Team."

I know that some are loathe to bash a higher-up due to the terrible actions of low-level personnel whom he never even likely had contact with, but, especially in the Stryker Brigades, the joke goes that the chain of command is "God, the President, and the Brigade Commander." He fostered a certain climate, and it backfired considerably in the actions of some of his Soldiers. Added to the post-NTC misgivings about his command ability, it makes him look even worse.

4) This letter was written about a month after he changed command with COL Barry Huggins who was my Battalion Commander when I was in Iraq. COL Huggins is an outstanding officer and a generally brilliant guy. He was tasked with cleaning up the mess COL Tunnell left behind by implementing what amounted to a complete cultural shift of the newly re-flagged 2-2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team (5-2 SBCT no longer exists, an action that was supposedly unrelated to past sins). This letter was little more than an attempt at justification for his command climate. The actions of 5-2 are why COL Tunnell was hit with a "smear campaign." He never should have remained in command of a combat brigade, yet he was kept on for P.C. reasons (not an official statement, but I'm absolutely convinced that's why he wasn't fired).

Huge differences in the people, huge differences in how the war was fought (the people KNEW they had been BEATEN), huge differences in how the peace was administered (military proconsuls, not State Dept. fools).

Now, regarding #1, given a temporary halt and the Brit 1-star in the area of operations, who even you seem to admit was a liability, I can see why Yon may have gotten the wrong idea.

I agree with you. IDF and CAS are notoriously (in general) difficult to get the OK for, and I even repeated, via Facebook, Yon's article. Then a buddy of mine who was just over there as an artillery officer cleared up the confusion. Yon was parroting the very limited view of a young private instead of verifying through people higher up the chain exactly what was happening.

I now know to be very skeptical of Yon's writings, and his championing of COL Tunnell further cements that in my mind.

I really appreciate your report, it completes matches other reports that I had gotten from soldiers and officers in the brigade, from sources at the NTC, and other sources at Lewis. But, since I was never on the ground with the brigade at Lewis, NTC, or in the box; I kept my mouth shut.

I took some of this very personally because I had a nephew in 1-5 IN (later 1/2 Cav) for two tours and I commanded Black Watch Company, 2-1 IN in 1971 in Vietnam. My sense was that command climate was a big problem, but I didn’t know the details.

Yon is quite another issue. He’s become a sad case of late, his only sources of income are the donations on his web site and they are drying up since he is reporting from a hotel room in Bangkok.

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